j
Owning a business and keeping it fun Both Oliver and Kingsley were 26 years old with young families when they invested their savings and took on bank loans to buy the business . Despite the pressure , they were determined to keep it fun .
“ If we were going to do this , it still had to be fun ,” says Kingsley . “ Look , even if you ’ re working in a pub cleaning up spew on a Friday night , there needs to be some fun .”
“ Our relationship has evolved , that ’ s for sure ,” says Oliver as he expands on Kingsley ’ s succinct explanation . “ But even so , earlier today we had a three-hour meeting with our business coach , and you know , we were still making the same jokes . We can ’ t sit there for 3.5 hours without having a laugh . That hasn ’ t changed .
There have been some super-stressful times , but we ’ ve worked through them together and to be honest it ’ s the strength of our relationship that got us through those times . Sometimes one of us is stressed but the other one isn ’ t and that ’ s where the partnership works really well . I was recently sitting in my office not having the greatest day and I asked Kingo if he could pop in for a quick chat about something .
He had a body board that he ’ d bought for his son at Christmas , so he said , ‘ yes hold on ’, and then rode in on the body board . We had our chat , which cheered me up and then he said , ‘ Right I ’ ve got to catch this wave , I ’ m out of here ’. That playfulness hasn ’ t changed one bit . We get a lot of feedback from our clients and business coach about it , and it ’ s one of the reasons why they love working with us .
We encourage our teams to be playful . That ’ s what we value . We ’ ve had people working for us in the past who didn ’ t see that value , and that ’ s totally fine , but for us it ’ s so important to keep that going . That doesn ’ t mean we don ’ t work hard though .
I think it ’ s really hard to put a label on what that special sauce is . In the last few years , we ’ ve talked about it as ‘ the buzz ’. We ’ ve got our own internal definition about what that is and what it encompasses , and we give that definition of fun to as many people as possible . So , first and foremost , it has to start with us . We need to be the best buzzing team .”
The science of teambuilding There ’ s a big difference between having fun and using that as a tool to get better outcomes for businesses . People work better when they ’ re happy , but people are different and achieving that ideal isn ’ t as simple as it sounds .
“ When we first started working in this space , we just assumed everyone knew how to work in a team and understood the value of that ,” says Kingsley . “ But the first thing we saw was that not everyone does . That ’ s when we realised that we understood about teams better than many other people , even though they may be older than us and with more life experience . Once we started running the company , we began to use specific programmes to bring out specific outcomes . We started to go on a journey with some of our clients .
They could see that by building a certain product into a yearly or half-yearly plan , it could help them achieve the outcome they wanted , much faster than just having their MD simply deliver a PowerPoint to the workforce . So for example , if the big thing for a company is to have
“ If the purpose of an event is to bring everyone together , why would you have people sitting theatre style for 4 hours ?”
collaboration , then us coming in and having an activity that ’ s fun , engaging and based around collaboration , it gives the senior management team a much better chance of getting them where they want to be , because people will start to see the value of what they ’ re talking about .”
Oliver believes that timing also played a big part in their success . “ We all now had these little devices in our hands , our attention spans were shorter , and we were getting distracted quicker . A PowerPoint to explain the importance of collaboration wasn ’ t working anymore and we noticed that the need for engagement had never been greater . It was necessary to initially engage people in an activity and wrap all that learning up inside .”
Measuring success of teambuilding activities All this fun at work is great , but how does an employer know they ’ re getting a bang for their buck ?
“ There are a number of different ways to measure that ,” says Oliver . “ Most employers use an engagement survey , and they will run these quarterly , half-yearly or annually . The surveys give quantitative feedback on things like interaction with managers . One question for example , may ask how engaged an employee feels with their organisation , and the survey results might suggest an engagement rate of say 66 %. But then that rating improves after doing say six , or twelve months of different initiatives ( and not necessarily all with us ). And sometimes we ’ ll assist clients with building their own internal employee engagement surveys .”
At the most fundamental level , engagement activities work . “ There are clear statistics to prove it ,” says Oliver . “ If people walk out of a keynote speech , they will retain about 10 to 15 % of the content , whereas if they are part of an experiential activity , where it ’ s tactile or hands-on , their retention rate increases to 60 to 75 %.”
That ’ s a whopping 700 % increase in the return on investment of an events budget . Oliver is careful not to
30 Chief of Staff | Issue 2 2020